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Amazon just launched an app that lets people sign up for its palm recognition service without having to head to an in-store kiosk. The Amazon One app uses a smartphone's camera to take a photo of a palm print to set up an account. Once signed up, you can pay for stuff by using just your hand, ending the tyranny of having to carry a smartphone, cash or a burdensome plastic card.
The tech uses generative AI to analyze a palm's vein structure, turning the data into a "unique numerical, vector representation" which is recognized by scanning machines at retail locations. You'll have to add a payment method within the app to get started and upload a photo of your ID for the purpose of age verification.
The app launches today for iOS and Android. Previously, you'd have to go to a physical location to sign up for Amazon One. Beyond payments, the tech is also used as an age verification tool and as a way to enter concerts and sporting events without having to bring along a ticket.
Once you hand over your palm-print to the completely benevolent Amazon corporation, you'll have unfettered access to each and every Whole Foods grocery store throughout the country. Amazon,
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Microsoft's Copilot AI service is set to run locally on PCs, Intel told Tom's Hardware. The company also said that next-gen AI PCs would require built-in neural processing units (NPUs) with over 40 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of power — beyond the capabilities of any consumer processor on the market.
Intel said that the AI PCs would be able to run "more elements of Copilot" locally. Currently, Copilot runs nearly everything in the cloud, even small requests. That creates a fair amount of lag that's fine for larger jobs, but not ideal for smaller jobs. Adding local compute capability would decrease that lag, while potentially improving performance and privacy as well.
Microsoft was previously rumored to require 40 TOPS on next-gen AI PCs (along with a modest 16GB of RAM). Right now, Windows doesn't make much use of NPUs, apart from running video effects like background blurring for Surface Studio webcams. ChromeOS and macOS both use NPU power for more video and audio processing features, though, along with OCR, translation, live transcription and more, Ars Technica noted.
So far, the processor with the fastest NPU speed is Apple M3, which offers 18 TOPS across the lineup (M3, M3 Pro and M3 Ultra). AMD's Ryzen 8040 and 7040 laptop
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